


A Viper in the City

by anamatics



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:58:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2817974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It is a very unique way to assassinate someone, letting a number of extremely aggressive exotic snakes into their apartment."  </p><p>It's Christmas time in the City, and no one is waiting up to hear bells ring or children sing, counting down until Christmas Day.  There's a killer at work, going about the business of murder in a most interesting way.  Color Holmes and Watson intrigued and then stumped.  An offer of assistance by a recently released Moriarty and a stake out at the Bronx Zoo begin what is sure to be a whirlwind conclusion of a case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set some time before the big Joan-Sherlock blowup at the end of season two.
> 
> Content warning for snakes, bugs, and a little violence towards them (humans as well).

Equality in any relationship is a fallacy. She has known this for many years. One party always has more power, more control, over a situation. Perhaps they do not hold all the cards, but they possess enough to consider the deck stacked. The exchange of equals is not something that happens very often at all, in her experience.

Because even then, the exchange is hardly ever equal.

"You're quiet." Jamie starts, knees aching as she tries to hide it in a slower, more languid stretch. She's not fooling her companion, her breath coming in foggy clouds before her.

"My apologies, I was under the impression that every word out of my mouth was a lie and you did not wish for me to speak."

They are sitting in a freezing car in a mostly abandoned parking lot. It is a concession that Jamie did not make easily, the exposure is not to her liking. This was what was negotiated, and she won't walk away from another chance to continue her study of Joan Watson.

The remark has hit a nerve and Watson shifts, tugging her scarf up over her mouth and huddling back further into her jacket. She's only wearing leggings, Jamie thinks that she must be freezing.

"You could tell me more about who we're looking for."

"Why Joan, I thought you knew the case forwards and backwards and certainly didn't need my help."

Watson exhales steamy breath and fidgets. She looks uncomfortable and Jamie feels a small, vindictive smile curl at the base of her stomach. She lets it drift across her face. She likes being right.

"Well, I did until we got a call from Agent Matoo saying you knew the people who were doing this."

Jamie considers this for a moment, and then dismisses Watson's supposition. They had known nothing about the killer, the real killer, before Jamie had caught wind of it in Sherlock's most recent letter. She'd had to intervene - they were operating blind and no one was allowed to kill them but Jamie. She'd thought she'd made that abundantly clear when she'd murdered Devon Gaspar. Evidently, she'd been wrong and Sherlock had stumbled into the crosshairs of one of the most dangerous assassins that Jamie had ever made the mistake of employing. "It is a very unique way to assassinate someone, letting a number of extremely aggressive exotic snakes into their apartment."  She’d contacted Agent Matoo, offered to help, even though they’d released her months ago.

"You know who did this." It's said flatly, resigned.

"Only by reputation." She will not tell Joan how the job she’d hired him for had come apart at the seams, and how many snakes she'd had to kill before the man had given up his vengeful quest to eliminate her, irritated that she continued to mail them back to him in pieces. He knew better than to test her patience, and had stayed well out of her way after he’d learned that lesson. Jamie knew he would try again. It was only a matter of time. "The viper has his own set of morals, if you will, the job I offered did not align with them and I was turned down. That is, incidentally, how I met Sebastian Moran. All the better in the long run, one supposes."

"You had him so scared that he killed himself."

Jamie regards Watson blankly. "Of course I did, Joan. He was a liability, Sherlock knew his face and he knew mine, well, he knew Gaspar's. Not that I suppose that matters much anymore."

Watson turns away, her breath a cloudy huff. "This is why I don't want to do this."

"We aren't doing anything."

"The longer I spend with you, the more sociopathic you seem."

She tuts, low on her breath. She's never liked that comparison. "Not a sociopath darling, just better than most everyone. But even the best are allowed to make mistakes from time to time."

"And what, threatening to murder Moran's sister if he didn't off himself was your way of correcting a mistake?"

Jamie's lips drew up into a thin line. She does not want to have this conversation. She wants to go back to flirting with the idea of Joan Watson, the beauty and the all-consuming force of her. This is too real. "Not a mistake," Jamie sighs. "I liked Sebastian. He was good at what I wanted him to do. It is never easy to terminate the employment anyone you've worked well with."

"It's just business to you, isn't it, destroying people's lives."

"My business is power, Joan. I play the game and I play it to win. "I'm better, more evolved. No one sees me coming until it's too late." She exhales, tilting her head to one side. Watson is beautiful in the dim light of the car. Jamie lets her eyes flutter shut, looks down, embarrassed at her weakness. "No one, save you, Joan."

"If this is your idea of flattery..."

"You'd know if it was." Jamie smiles, small and genuine. It feels odd on her face, just another mask she puts on.

Watson lets out a harmph of air, sitting back in her seat, arms crossed over her chest. "I'm freezing," she says, changing the subject. Watson always shies away from who Jamie really is. It means that Jamie can never let her forget it.  That is the game Jamie plays with her.

"You could have worn trousers."

"These are thermal leggings," Watson replies. Jamie raises an eyebrow, all challenge at the logic of not wearing trousers when the temperature is hovering well below zero. "And I have warm socks on underneath them."

"We could move to the back seat, if you're cold." It's a daring suggestion, the part of this that they don't openly acknowledge to anyone. Sherlock may have seen it, but Jamie will be damned if she admits it to him.

"That's a very bad idea, we're supposed to be on a stakeout."

Jamie blinks innocently. She wasn't proposing that they go snog in the back seat like teenagers, merely that they could be closer and closer meant warmer.

"Your assumptions as to my integrity are heartwarming."

"I wasn't aware you had any at all."

Jamie leans forward, eyes narrow and hand catching Watson's shoulder so quickly that Watson has no time to react. "I keep my promises Watson. Surely you know this by now." Watson is warm beneath her jacket; Jamie wants to curl into that warmth. Anything is better than this hellish car.

Watson looks away, gloved fingers curling around Jamie's and removing them from her person. "I do." Jamie wonders what it must have cost Watson to admit that.

"There is chemistry here." It's a gamble.

Watson shifts, scarf falling from where it's been covering her mouth. She looks as cold as Jamie feels, fingers curling back into the sleeve of her jacket. She doesn't say anything for a long time. Jamie watches her breath fog the space between them, watches how it dissipates and curls, warm and dewing, against the windows. A perverse part of her thinks them teenagers, embracing the cold night and sharing body heat. But they are not, not really.

Would that even be a possibility?

"We work... well together." Watson licks her lip. Jamie finds herself, caught, fascinated by the motion and the way that the saliva glistens on Watson's lips, lingering, drawing her attention away from anything but those lips. She wants to see them swollen, red with kisses, parted in release. She's seen it before, just once, and has been looking for an excuse for months to see it again.

"We do." Jamie shifts, elbow digging into the arm rest between them. They've come very close together now, arguing and shivering in the cold December air. Jamie could touch her, if she wanted to. Jamie could have her, but that is not how this should go. To have Watson is to let her think she's in control. To submit to that lie, to lead her from her knees.

Jamie would do it, too.

She wants to see if Watson would go that far again.

Watson is leaning in, her breath warm on Jamie's cold cheek, her eyes half shut.

Somewhere, far in the distance, a clatter and then the rumble of an explosion can be heard. Watson jerks away, a hissed curse at her lips. She tugs her cap down over ears and glances at Jamie, licking her lips once more. "This conversation is not over."

"I'm sure." A wry smirk tugs at Jamie's lips. She'll have Watson yet.


	2. Chapter 2

The zoo itself is abandoned at this hour. A few late-night attendants mill about, staring at the damage to the rear gate. One of them, the night manager that Jamie recognizes from the interrogation tapes she’d been allowed to watch a few days before, is speaking on a cell phone in quick, anxious tones. The police, she thinks, and closes her eyes against the momentary feeling of panic that she cannot quite suppress no matter how many years she’s spent schooling her ability to hide her emotions beneath a completely neutral mask. They know that she is here, unfortunate as that fact may be; her presence is expected.

Watson is speaking to another one of the zoo’s employees, one that Jamie does not recognize. Her face is drawn into a grim expression of fearful worry that Jamie finds herself wanting to eliminate through any means necessary, even if it means killing the Viper herself to save the police the trouble of an arrest.

“What’s happened?” Watson has gripped her arm and pulled them back, almost into the gift shop of the abandoned entrance. They stand under the low awning, their breath fogging in the night air. “Why do you look so upset?”

“They were supposed to bring in a panda today, visiting from Washington.”

“Why on earth would they do that?” Jamie scowls.

“Because people like pandas?”

“I don’t.”

“There’s something wrong with you.”

Jamie doesn’t look away from Joan’s gaze, but her eyes do flutter closed for the briefest of instances. The answer, as they so often are, is never that simple.

When Jamie was a child she had loved all sorts of bears. They were, perhaps her second love, after the stars. When she was very young and too foolish to know better she fancied that someday she might become an ursinologist. She was captivated by the sheer force of power behind them, the tenacity, and the willingness to be seen and yet to be a shadow. They were unlike big cats, or even wolves - animals that it made more sense to love - because they were common and yet uncommon, extraordinary in their survival skills. And, best of all in her child's mind, they were predators that did not look like predators.

Her father had, in a moment of lucidity, taken her to see an exhibit of freshly arrived panda bears from China. Jamie had been eight years old at the time, wearing her hair in two long braids down her back. She'd stood on her tiptoes in the middle of the Zoological Society of London's enclosure, fingers wrapped around the bars. To this day, Jamie measures all disappointment she feels against that moment. She was so young, so full of optimism about the excellence of these creatures.

The panda bear was eating bamboo. The brochure that her father had gotten explained in vague, zoological terms that were supposedly too complicated to understand, that panda bears were not predators. They survived on bamboo and that half their young died in the wild for lack of nutrition. Conservation efforts were underway, but ZSL was not optimistic regarding their survival in the wild.

Jamie turned away from the exhibit in disgust, stubby child's fingers ripping the brochure to shreds. "I hate them," she said to her father. "I want to see the raptors now."

He looked down at her for a long moment before extending his hand and leading her away towards the aviary. They never spoke of Jamie's love of bears again.

The memory of day has been burned into Jamie's mind. There are times when she will catch herself picking up _National Geographic_ or a zoological journal only to discard it in disgust. The disappointment of that moment can never be forgotten. She sucks her teeth, making a disgusted sound at Watson's insult. She looks down at her fingernails, willing her hand not to shake in the cold of this winter night. "My dislike of an animal that refuses to reproduce without external stimulus aside, what does a panda have to do with the Viper and his snakes?"

"The zoo in Washington apparently sent up some snakes to go into the reptile house - they've got a hatchery down there - along with the advance team for the panda and they've gone missing. Someone blew out the service entrance to get to them. Apparently the panda that you hate so much is in distress." Watson frowns and tilts her head to one side, staring off into the middle-distance, clearly thinking.

"Ah, snake theft." Jamie lets out a mirthless laugh. "A step above snake smuggling, I’m sure."

"I suppose." Watson shrugs. She steps back towards the zoo employee, her fingers jammed deep into the pockets of her wool coat. She looks absolutely freezing, Jamie thinks, and steps forward more out of instinct than anything else, hovering at Watson's shoulder as she's seen Sherlock do many times before. At least this way, Watson is protected from the stiff breeze that is blowing at her back. It is the least Jamie can do; a gesture that will not go unforgotten. "Could we look at where you'd had the snakes set up?"

The employee nods, fumbling with keys at his belt under his canvas jacket. When he speaks, his accent says Staten Island, and Jamie wonders what he's doing all the way up in the Bronx. "Don't know what you'll find in there, Joan. Just a bunch of busted heat lamps and some empty boxes. We were still in the process of getting them set up and checked out by the vet."

"Thanks Mark," Watson replies, glancing over her shoulder and starting at Jamie's proximity. She turns her attention back to Mark. "I know it seems weird, but sometimes it's better to get a look at things."

"Clues right?" Mark laughs. "Like Nancy Drew or some shit?"

"Something like that."

"Jer says that he's got the cops coming. Should I tell Detective Bell where you're at?"

"That'd be excellent."

He nods and leaves them at the entrance of the enclosure that has so clearly been broken into. Overhead there are harsh florescent lights that cast even Joan's skin into a deathly sort of pallor that only makes the stale tasting air of the room feel suffocating. Jamie swallows, stepping into the room fully. It reeks of the ocean, of dead and dying fish, and of suffocating oxygen. It is so cold that Jamie aches just moving about the room.

"It is far too cold in here to keep snakes alive, even under heat lamps."

Watson makes a sound to the affirmative at the back of her throat. "I was thinking the same thing."

"The question then, my dear Watson, is why were they kept in here in the first place?"

The room is largely empty now. Jamie picks her way around the mess of boxes and broken glass carefully, bending to inspect them. The Viper is a cunning killer like the creatures he takes his name from, and this seems almost sloppy for him. She's not quite ready to articulate this observation to Watson yet. She wants to see what Watson will say first.

The enclosure is small enough that Watson can check the perimeter quickly, and Jamie is straightening, a small piece of paper found amidst the tangle of moss and glass at her feet in one hand. Somewhere, just beyond her field of vision, the door is yanked closed with the grinding scrape of metal against concrete.

"Hello?" Watson calls. There is a hint of worry in her voice that grows as she shouts again: “Hello?”

Jamie closes her eyes. Stupid, stupid, foolish, trusting. She pulls her gun from the shoulder holster that Detective Gregson had grudgingly let her borrow. She hadn’t come prepared to get involved in a murder investigation, just to provide some advice.  Best laid plans and all that. "Get behind me."

The paper is crumpled beyond recognition now, and Jamie has her gun trained on the door. Watson's breath is warm on Jamie's neck. "We did not clear the building before we stepped into this enclosure."

"Oh god," Watson groans. Her fingers tangle in the back of Jamie’s coat, a welcome and reassuring weight. "They've locked us in?"

Jamie steps forward, trying the door and leveling her gun at the lock. She would shoot, she should shoot.  Shoot and chase down their would-be captors. At this range, there is still a chance for a ricochet and she won't risk hurting Watson. Not now, not ever. "So it would seem. Do you have your lock picks?"

"They're in my purse." Watson groans. "In the car."

"Damn."

"You know," Watson says, an almost hysterical note creeping into her voice. "I think that's the first time I've ever heard you swear."

"My father did not care for vulgarity, Watson. He said it was for the unoriginal mind." Jamie looks away, hating that she'd let the detail slip. Watson is too perceptive. She notices things that she should not, infers things beyond the scope of what a normal human might. She truly is just like Jamie in that way, only her way of seeing things is far different from the way that Jamie assesses people.

"Oh." Watson bites her lip, breath fogging before her. She wraps her arms around herself. "It is very cold in here." Her breath is a thick cloud of fog around her head. "I suppose we have to wait until Marcus comes and lets us out?"

"It would seem so. I do hope Detective Bell is prompt."

Watson seems to debate, hesitate, and then her resolve crumbles like Jamie knew it would. She crosses to the far wall, well away from any possible evidence that the crime scene unit might be able to pick up, and slumps down against the wall. She draws her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around herself. "Come sit next to me."

There is no good arguing with her. Jamie is cold too. She sits with her legs straight in front of her, gun in her lap. Watson does not object, and Jamie is grateful. She is loath to point out the obvious, after all. The Viper knows of them, it seems. He knows of her involvement and he's looking to get them out of the picture long enough to make his escape.

"Your father encouraged your creativity?"

"I never said that."

"But you said something." Watson exhales a pale fog, cloaking her face before it dissipates. "I can't remember you ever mentioning your parents before."

Jamie says nothing, her mouth clammed shut and her hands shaking not from cold. Stupid, stupid. She cannot help herself sometimes. Pushing and pushing because it's so damn easy to forget that this is never safe, that it will never be safe. That she's a fool for even entertaining the idea.

Her breath comes as a thick cloud of worry. Watson sees everything, even things she should not see. She is clairvoyant in ways that even Jamie's brief flirtations with divinity cannot fathom. Jamie hates it. Hates her, hates that she's so willing to do things for a chance to see Watson work, to invest more time into attempting to decipher the indecipherable.

She takes a deep breath. Watson is warm and solid at her shoulder. "My father," she begins, lie bit back by teeth sharp enough to bruise. Watson has this uncanny ability to suss out the truth in Jamie's lies, perhaps it is time to see what she'd do with the truth. "Died of a heart attack when I was eleven. Before that he was never around, business, the club, his lovers, you know how men are." At Watson's eye roll, Jamie shrugs, perhaps a reminder of the privilege of her upbringing is not what is needed. "There were no rags in my story, Joan. Far from it, really. I couldn't have wanted for anything growing up."

"Then why ... do what you do?"

"That is a complicated question, my dear Joan."

"It appears we have time," Watson gestures grandly towards the locked door and their lack of an escape route. "Unless the Viper thought to leave us a snake or two to run away form."

"At this temperature most snakes would be absolutely useless, and they're far too precious to throw away on law enforcement if he does plan on going through with his plans."

"I like how you lump yourself in with us."

"Perhaps this time I'm on the side of angels."

Watson turns away, her face a blank mask. "You want something from this, I don't know what it is, but you do want something."

Jamie wants everything from this, but it is not her job to tell Watson these things. Watson has the mind for it; she can figure it out on her own. She says nothing for a long time, a shiver caught up in her spine. Perhaps it is easier to just forget this whole conversation ever took place.

"It is unbearably cold in here."

"It smells like fish too."

"Why on earth did they put the snakes in here? Surely this is not an ideal location for them." Jamie glances around. The room is full of sloping pools and ramps, the roof painted an empty aqua color that sets Jamie’s teeth on edge. "I think this is an empty penguin enclosure."

"Explains the smell." Watson’s head tilts back and she laughs and laughs.

They lapse into silence, Watson's laughter's echoes dying away into nothing.  Their breath fogs before them in silent, measured breaths.  Jamie catches herself wanting, needing really, to keep speaking.  Watson once told her that she loved the sound of her own voice.  She wasn’t the first person to say such a thing to Jamie.  The first had been her father, the sting on her cheek already reddening into what would become a purple-black smear across her skin.  Afterwards it had been lovers, college dalliances and then again at university.  She'd liked a certain type of man, the reminded her of her father, she supposed.  She'd killed that aspect of her personality at twenty two, shot the girl's father three times in the chest and hadn't looked back since.

Their thighs are pressed against each other, breath fogging in the air before them.  The whole situation is so utterly absurd that Jamie feels the laughter start to bubble up from the well within here where she locks away all that she cannot feel.

"What are you doing for Christmas?"  Watson's question comes with her unearthing her mobile from her pocket and staring at it with annoyance.  There's no signal in this fish-smelling concrete coffin they're locked inside.  She lets out a quiet sound that might be disgust and jams it back into her pocket.  She's starting to look a bit blue about the lips, and Jamie knows that they need to be rescued soon else the Viper is going to slip through their fingers and vanish into the crowded city at this time of year.

Jamie fingers the gun in her lap, delicately flipping the safety on and off and on and off.  She likes the repetitive motion, a quirk she's seen in Sherlock too.  Another reason why they're the same.  "I don't plan on staying long enough to have a holiday, Watson."

There's a moment where Watson's frustratingly impassive mask falters and shifts to something that could be sadness, or perhaps it is just pity.  Jamie cannot read her, but there is something there, something that Jamie finds endlessly intriguing.  "So why do you do it then? Kill all your connections to the point where forging one forced you to destroy a man's life?"

"Irene was a lie."

"There was a great deal of truth in her."

Her fingers are shaking and she flips the safety of her gun on off on off on off.  Watson's noticed, staring with eyes fit to judge.  She's cornered, backed up against a concrete wall that sucks the warmth from her body, and she has to say something to Watson else all will fall apart.  "Perhaps I want to know you, Joan."  Jamie gestures to the shared air between them.  "There is a connection between us, one I never intended to see come to light."

She wants it though, oh how she wants it.  She wants to see what Watson looks like debauched and left with nothing but a sated mind.  She wants to know how such an act will change her, how she moves, what her voice sounds like at the moment of crescendo. They hadn’t had time before, for Jamie to really relish the exquisiteness of Joan Watson.

Jamie wets her lips and pulls out her own phone.  It's futile, still no reception.  Whatever is delaying Detective Bell is going to result in them freezing half to death.  Or fucking in this fish-smelling enclosure, but that possibility seems unlikely in this bone-chilling cold.

Watson's exhalation is like a funnel of steam.  "I suppose that there is."  It's in that moment, their eyes meeting that Jamie sees that same recognition, that same spark of want and desire that cleaves through whatever resistance and sense of self-preservation she has.  She craves her downfall, her most perfect doom.  "Once this case is solved and we've caught this guy, are you leaving immediately?"

"I'm only here as a favor to Agent Matoo," Jamie replies, even though it is truly the other way around.  She had wanted to be involved in this investigation, and he’d provided her with the means by which to insert herself. "The deal I made does stipulate that I avoid America for a while."

"Oh."  Watson's face falls.  "I'd..." she looks away and Jamie feels the smile creep over her face like a smug cat just eaten the family canary.  She tugs her cap further down over her head and tilts her head back to stare at the poorly painted clouds on the ceiling above them.  "I'd thought that maybe you'd like to... I don't know, have a drink or something.  It’s Christmas, after all."

Jamie raises an eyebrow.  "Are you asking me out for holiday drinks?"

"Well, Eggnog doesn't agree with my stomach."

"Probably for the best, it's ghastly for you.  Sherlock loves it."

"I know, it's disgusting.  He and Ms. Hudson had some at her Christmas party last weekend and it was all I could smell for days."

"A drink would be lovely, Joan, provided we are ever released from this room."

In the cold, the details of the case start to swim by in Jamie's head.  Snakes and dead diplomats and the man with the scruffy beard and boyish good looks behind it all. The only reason she's even involved is because she'd turned down this job and Agent Matoo had somehow found out about her declining it and had wanted to know what she knew.  She knows that once released from their fishy coffin that they'll have to move fast.  The Viper has stolen more snakes, and there's another target (safely in police protective custody in Jersey City) to be killed still. One that Jamie cannot allow to die, not if her enterprise has any hope of survival.

Jamie wants the Viper; she wants to know his secrets, his snake charming and his client list.  She's rebuilding her empire, and she will claw her way back to the top through any means necessary.  She must disappear soon; remake herself into the image of someone new, someone with less discernable ties to this place, to law enforcement, to Sherlock and Watson.

It is the urge to run, to destroy the face of Moriarty beyond all recognition and to start over that has Jamie on edge, because she does not want to let Watson go.  Not until she understands.

She supposes acquiescing to a drink is a step towards that understanding.

From the door there is a loud grating sound, metal scraping against metal, and Jamie is crouching knees touching the cold floor of the enclosure.  She glances behind her, voice no more than the barest whisper.  Watson has no weapon and will not be able to protect herself from whatever is on the other side of that door.  Jamie's eyes narrow.  "Stay behind me," she hisses.  "Stay low."

The scraping continues, loud, echoing throughout the enclosure.  Jamie lets out a slow breath and waits.

This is not a learned skill, but a survival instinct born of years of ducking under the fists of drunks.  She's always liked the addicts; they're easier to control, until they spiral to the point where they can no longer be controlled.

Her father is dead, her lovers all dead.  All that remains is Sherlock, and Jamie has no interest in depriving the world of such a mind, even if he does fail to comprehend how vast his potential truly is.

The door creeks and a voice calls out.  "Joan?  Are you in there?"

"Marcus!"  Watson is on her feet and Jamie is shoving the gun away.  She's not supposed to have one, not on this particular visit.  She's there to 'observe and provide input' as Sherlock has reminded her a few times now.

Detective Bell has two cups of coffee in his hands.  He tentatively holds one out to Jamie with a raised eyebrow and an attractive smile.  Jamie thinks that he and Watson would be good together, if Watson liked utterly boring and yet irritatingly good looking safe men.  Jamie isn't sure that she does, though.  Or at least not just.  "Sorry you got stuck."

"No matter, I was starting to grow accustomed to the smell."  Jamie takes a sip of the coffee. It's too sweet and there's milk in it.  She supposes such things cannot be helped.  "Thank you."

He raises his other eyebrow to join the first and nods.  Jamie wonders if her politeness has shocked him.  She hopes it has, it's another leg up in this never-ending game between them, where the roles of cat and mouse are forever blurred into something obscure and ever-changing.

Detective Bell is clad in a warm jacket and sturdy boots.  He pulls a flashlight from his pocket and asks them to describe what happened to them.  Jamie sips her coffee and lets Joan do the talking.  She's preoccupied in the scrape marks on the floor.  A large case, probably with metal or metal-covered wheels, was dragged along the dried-out pool floor away from the shattered heat-lamp set up in the far corner of the room.

She thinks the Viper clever, but not exactly original.  She'll cut his snakes to pieces, and then she'll do the same to him.  The man he'd killed had been soft, the sort of person that Jamie could have exploited in the future.  She'd turned down the job because of it, and now the potential contact was lost.  It disappointed her, another crumbling brick dissolving into the smoldering ash that remained of her once-great empire.

The zoo employees are speaking now.  Talking about how this room was actually supposed to be heated, and how there must have been some sort of error, because snakes could never survive in an environment like this.  They blame it on the holidays, on the people who come to this place in droves to stare at caged beasts who have never tasted freedom.  Jamie thinks them lazy and fools to boot.

The scrape marks lead down the hallway, and Jamie slips out silently, into the shadows and darkness.  She hears footsteps behind her a few paces later, and her lips curl upwards.  Watson is a far better detective than she thinks she is.

"What did you see?"

Jamie turns, hands in her pockets and face half-cloaked in shadow.  She pitches her chin downwards and indicates the marks on the concrete floor of the zoo's inner, private, corridors. "Scrape marks, on the floor, probably from a metal case."

She watches as Joan shines her own flashlight (probably borrowed from one of the uniformed officers who had followed Detective Bell into the enclosure) down on the floor.  Watson bends, carefully traces the deep gouges in the paint that covers the floor.  "Those snakes were not the only thing shipped into this place."  Watson pushes herself back to her feet and shines the light down the dimly-lit hallway.  "Where does that end up?"

"Haven't the foggiest."

"Do you want to go have a look?"

"Why, Watson, are you trying to get me alone?"

"I've had you alone all night."

"In a freezing car and locked in a room that smells like fish, both locations known for their ambiance."

Watson rolls her eyes inclines her head down the hallway. "Just... come on."  

They move in silence, down a long corridor marked by locked doors that show no signs of tampering.  The final door, where they do see evidence to tampering, leads out of doors and back into the bitter cold.

There are Christmas lights strung up outside.  Jamie stares at them for a moment, breath fogging in the night air, and glances around. There are no more signs of the intrusion or the theft, just Joan Watson standing in the middle of a break in the maze of paths that lead tourists and school children around the zoo.  Above them, lights blink in the skeletal fingers of the trees that stretch up to the heavens, dormant in this freezing cold night.

When Jamie was a child, this was a magical time for her.  Her father was not a good man, and her mother was never present.  Holidays were spent away at school, for it was only at school that she could sneak down to the vicar in the school’s chapel and listen to the old man's tales of Christmases long, long ago.  Her father hated religion, found it a weakness he did not wish to see in his daughter, and they did not celebrate such a time.  Christmas was for dinner parties and appearances, not for childish wonder or delight.

The vicar understood that there was no love of the spiritual nature of the holiday in the little girl who’d come under his tutelage. He told her nothing but the tales of past glories, of battles and wars, victories that weren't Christian in nature as well as those that were.  He taught her Greek when she was nine - to help satisfy her curiosity about the man-like gods of the ancient Mediterranean. She read the Bible, twisting the words around and finding nothing but lies where the vicar found peace.

He had a weak mind, she later concluded, but he showed a kindness to her when the blackness in her heart was already evident, a smear against childhood innocence in the form of bruised knees and a suffocating loneliness.

It was only at university that she embraced solitude as endemic of her superiority to the weak-willed people around her who craved the empty feeling of companionship and trust in another.  She was as the gods of her childhood fascination were once: cold, aloof, and alone in the universe.  It was only when Sherlock, and then his companion, flitted into her life that Jamie realized that there were others like her, others that would be gods.

Watson is standing in the middle of a meeting of three paths, looking around with curious and analytical eyes.  She's assessing their options.  Two roads in a wintry wood, a third leading back the way they’ve come.  Only this is the city and no one has any time for poetry.

Snow has started to fall.

"He's gone."

Jamie glances around, makes a noncommittal noise and plunges her hands into her pockets.  This place is haunting, stirring up memories of a time she'd buried long ago.  The Viper had no way of knowing that he'd done this, yet it feels like a coup.  She will have his head, twist it around and serve it up to his employer on a silver platter.  She'll remind them again why they're afraid to even speak her name above a whisper.

She watches Watson, watches the disappointment flow across her face.  She could not have honestly thought it would be this easy.  Such enemies are hardly the sort that can be easily tracked, let alone easily apprehended.  They will need the cunning of a mongoose to catch this snake.

Cunning that is not, regrettably, found on little sleep while freezing cold.

"Would you like to give chase, or do you want to go back to Detective Bell, consult the shipping manifest from Washington and allow Sherlock to continue his surveillance of the supposed target's residence for the evening?"  There's a small smile curling at her lips, breath a hazy cloud before her.  Watson is undoubtedly freezing cold, shaking in the December air but hiding it well.  "Get some sleep?"

Watson regards her, lights in the trees sparkling in her hair.  "I didn't know you slept."

"Everyone sleeps."  Jamie shakes her head.  "Else we go mad."

There's a twist at Watson's lips then, and she steps forward.  "You know what I mean."

She does indeed, and the smile turns indulgent.  They're in each other's space.  Far too close, Watson smiling and Jamie wishing that this didn't feel so much like sin.

The Viper would have his due for stirring up such recollections.

"Joan!"

They turn as one to see Detective Bell hurrying from the door they've come out of.  Jamie bites back the curse that fights its way to her lips and forces her face blank and emotionless.  He cannot see this side of her, the side she's only ever shown to a few people, even if he does have promise.

He sends them home a few moments later, telling them that Sherlock is still on his stakeout, but that there doesn't seem to be much happening on his end either.

"Get some sleep while you can.  We had a window for this; after all, this business with the snakes might just be the beginning."


	3. Chapter 3

Jamie does not sleep.

To sleep is to descend into the land of nightmares, the place where her life is meaningless, a pool of blood underneath Sebastian Moran's tripod.  She turns the case over in her mind, staring up at the perfect blank of her hotel room's ceiling.  Watson had turned down her offer, a lamenting admission of exhaustion; they'd been running ragged for days on this case now.

Jamie is glad that she’d missed that, come in at the eleventh hour when they already knew their target well enough.  She’d been able to immerse herself in getting caught up, in gathering information and providing the key pieces that they’d yet to set into the puzzle.  She’s been holding back a few detail here and there, trying to keep herself one step ahead. She has a goal, a want, from this meeting with the Viper.  She even knows his name.

She’s held back though, cautious with the details. Information is her business, after all, and she plays the game well. These are the details that she wants to hold back, to play close to the vest until she knows that this man won’t survive the encounter.  It is starting to look as though that will not be the case, and the twisted pull of satisfaction that comes with the realization is almost enough to chase away the nightmares of this night.

This time of year is not easy on Jamie.  She's long-since given up caring for such times, they hold no sentimentality for her.  There is no one left to share them with, she supposes.  And yet she is forced to confront her humanity during this time over and over again.  It comes in strange guises, the pleasant face of Joan Watson or the haunted recollections of all that she and Sherlock had once been.  She hates it, hates how it makes her weak, makes her remember things that are meant to stay buried.  The memory of her quest for divinity, the vicar who’d helped her along on her quest for god-hood.  She’d been a god, torn down and turned around by the same fallacy that they fall prey to eventually.

Love, lust, it is all the same in the end.

The memory of a Christmas past plagues her thoughts now, unrelenting in its persistence.  She sees Sherlock in a knit cap and scarf, standing in the middle of a forest of short pines, hatchet in hand.  They'd bought a Christmas tree together, their one holiday that they shared.  They'd strung popcorn and cranberries, made ornaments out of the surplus of supplies that littered Irene's apartment.  She knew then, as they shared a moment before this tree, that this had to end and end soon.  She was growing fond, affectionate, and such a thing could never last.

She'd given him a scarf of red knit wool, bought in Sweden on business.  He'd given her something far more precious.  A slip up, a case file left out and the unfurling of a whole future before her very eyes.  She'd known of the man beforehand, but never seen his work in such detail before.  Sherlock was vexed by the case and had snatched the file from her hands and thrown it away onto a pile of his papers in the corner of her studio where it had lain through Christmas Eve and Day, lingering into Boxing Day and then beyond.  It was by the New Year, the tree out on the curb, that he'd let her see the file again.  He'd shown her what Sebastian Moran did, and Jamie had seen her final solution to the problem of Irene Adler.

It is strange for her to unlearn her habits around Sherlock.  She twists them around and projects them back onto him, onto Watson.  She likes Watson for her ability to see straight through anything that Jamie dares throw at her.  There's want there, twisting a curling at the pit of Jamie's stomach.  She will have Joan Watson again, this time with the chance to linger beyond their hurried and violent coupling of before.

Perhaps this is her Christmas present.  To have the memory of what it felt like to be loved, once, at this time of year, only to be caught up in wanting another and the disquiet that comes from the memory of Sherlock and how foolishly she'd fallen.  Perhaps this was her doom, to always remember how she could have given up her enterprise for that feeling, and how she’d never even considered it.

Sleep does not come easily for Jamie, it never has.  The nightmares turn to dreams, and it is in the dream world that she is at her most vulnerable.

And the beauty of a winter night all covered in snow is all that keeps her from feeling as though she’s gone truly mad.

 

A sleepless night leads to a restless morning.  Her enterprise is in shambles after her stint under Agent Matoo’s care, and brick by still-crumbling brick she’s trying to rebuild her empire up into something that she sink back into, wrapped in a cloak of shadow and anonymity.  This is a chance to get back into the game under the guise of doing good and winning her the affection that she wants from Watson.  She’s on the side of angels ostensibly, she holds no allegiance save to herself. 

She wants the Viper, she wants his contacts and his methods examined, and she wants him gone. She’ll kill him if she has to, but it seems more fitting to stow him away in an American prison until she can find cause to use him once more.  Sebastian is gone, Gaspar is gone, she has very few people left that she can trust, and her number of contacts is devastatingly low.  To win the Viper’s contacts, to take them in a meeting of wits and minds, that is what Jamie wants, and Joan Watson is going to help her get them.

They meet for coffee in Chelsea, far away from Brooklyn and further from the Zoo.  It's snowing gently, it's been doing it all night, and it's started to accumulate now as Watson sweeps a swirl of snowflakes in with her and settles down on a stool across from Jamie on the small table she's taken for them.

"Sherlock says nothing happened at the apartment last night."

Jamie's man she’d set on Sherlock’s tail had said the same thing.  There was no activity outside of the zoo the previous evening.  Sherlock had spent the night curled up in a very expensive car trying not to freeze to death.  Jamie supposed it was better than being surrounded by non-native fauna and people who enjoyed panda bears.

"Pity," Jamie purses her lips and eyes the menu written on chalk in a flourishing hand.   She cannot let on, not just yet, how much she knows of this situation.  Watson has figured out that she wants something, yes, because Watson isn’t stupid.  To have her guessing while Jamie steers them towards the most desirable outcome seems a reasonable solution to the problem at hand.

This coffee shop was a suggestion of her driver.  Far enough away from familiar territory that they are sure to be left alone until they are ready to venture out into the snowy city once more.  There are high tables and low benches, a sign urging people to please not use their laptops in the door and the surly, frowning face of the shop's logo emblazoned in white at the window.  There are bits of evergreen, fresh and not fake, dotting the long narrow space, and everyone seems to be full of the good holiday cheer that Jamie finds herself detesting.

Even Watson is wearing reindeer earrings.

She's tugged off her knit cap and is trying to smooth her static-charged hair into some semblance of order.  It’s a moment of humanity that Jamie did not expect from Watson, who is perhaps the only angel of destruction that Jamie knows.  "I've never been here before."  It's a confession, Watson tucking her hair behind her ears and drawing more attention to the obnoxious earrings she's chosen to wear. To admit that this is unfamiliar turf is interesting, doubly so when Watson sucks her lower lip into her mouth and gives Jamie one of those sheepish self-conscious smiles that betrays only how far Jamie would be willing to go to truly know what was going on inside that pretty head.

There's a moment then, when Jamie wants to rip the earrings from her ears and throw them away into the gathering snow.  She hates them, hates that Watson is not as immune to the season as Jamie thinks she should be.  Watson who is not of this faith, Watson who should know better.  This season is a lie, fake cheer and ill tidings all wrapped up in an opiate for those who are too afraid to think for themselves.

Her hand shakes and she turns, staring up at the menu. She can't look at Watson.  Not now.  Not until she can reign in her emotions and present the sort of person that Watson would want the way that Jamie wishes to be wanted.  They've been through this, the twisting web of all that is and yet is not said between them.  

They are both far better actors than they let on, and the games they play with each other are truly delightful to a mind starved for stimulus.

"It is a bit far, isn't it?"

"I imagined it was your intent."  Watson tilts her head, a fond smile on her face and reindeer at her ears.  There is a familiarity in her voice, a casual tone that betrays how far they truly have come in order to be at the point where they can accept each other.  Such things will never come to pass, but Jamie knows that she can take her small victories in the form of Joan Watson’s pliant skin beneath her lips.  "To get away from where prying ears might feel inclined to listen in."

Jamie lets out a small snort of a laugh even if she doesn't feel amused in the slightest.  She does not wish to be reminded of Sherlock after the night of dreams she’d had. "He does make a habit of such things, doesn’t he?"

"He's asleep, if you must know.  He spent the night be cold and miserable with Alfredo -" Watson falters, as though she's realized the name might be alien.

"His car thief sponsor, I know."

"Of course you do."

"It is my business to know things, especially about the people I find interesting Joan."  Jamie is starting to relax.  Starting to feel calm enough to look at Watson and not want to commit acts of violence.  She exhales, leans forward just a little bit and tries not to look eager.  "I'd like a flat white."

Watson orders an espresso shot and pays without question. Jamie had gotten the last coffee they'd shared, almost six months ago.  That had been Watson’s fall from grace, her concession to Jamie’s constant needling and coy flirtation.  She’d let it happen, or maybe had even wanted it to happen.  Jamie didn’t know. 

Perhaps _that_ wasWatson’s game. 

"Marcus called when I was on my way over here," Watson says.  She’s coming back with a tiny cup and a larger one for Jamie.  "They found the manifest when management got in this morning.  Is the Viper known to use bugs?"

"Bugs?"

"More specifically centipedes."

"No centipede bite will kill a person, Joan.  They aren't that venomous, especially not in a city as big as this."

Watson purses her lips and sips delicately at her espresso.  "There was a note on the manifest that there was a shipment of centipedes included with the snakes in that shipment from the Washington Zoo."

Now that is interesting, and it feeds into a theory about this case that Jamie has had since examining the first report from the medical examiner.  The snakes the Viper had used were not known to be especially poisonous, especially not in a city of this size.  Anti-venoms were common enough here, and the snakes were known.  It should have been easy enough to save him, had they gotten to him in time. 

Perhaps that was the method of the Viper, to show his hand and then go forward with a new method, an added element of despair.  Jamie admired the cruelty.  She exhaled, leaning against the table on one elbow, schooling an expression of disinterest onto her face.   "While fascinating creatures, they truly aren't a threat. Their bites cause irritation yes, and pain, obviously.  But not a threat to your man."

"He isn't mine." 

_Too right_ , Jamie thinks.  Jamie twists her cup around, admiring the perfect blankness of the drink.  Beauty to hide a dark underbelly.  It is almost fitting.  "You know what I mean."

"But then why steal them?"

"Haven't the foggiest.  I am more concerned with finding the Viper."

"There must be a reason...who wants to keep a venomous centipede?"

Jamie has no answer she cares to share.  She has a theory based on the medical records that they'd obtained from their first dead diplomat. The Viper's second target, the first's twin brother who'd worked as his aide and policy advisor, would have a similar disposition. An allergy and sensitivity to certain venoms.  How the Viper would know this is a mystery that Jamie finds fascinating.

They are called back to the precinct not long after Jamie finishes her coffee and regards Watson with quiet disinterest as she finally caves and goes back up to order herself a cup of coffee to go.  They run on the stuff, she and Sherlock both, and Jamie had anticipated that there would be a second coffee order in Watson’s future.  She disappears into the tiny cell of a bathroom while they’re preparing it, leaving Jamie to collect it from the smiling barista who winks at Jamie and offers her a sticker to go with the order.

“Because you ordered twice,” she says. “Merry Christmas.”

Jamie stares down at the scowling face on the sticker and feels as though her expression must be mimicking it back.  She nods her thanks and tucks the sticker away, waiting for Joan by the door in the tiny window alcove that looks out over the swirling snow. 

Her driver is waiting, and when Joan appears she does not protest the offer of a ride back to Brooklyn.

They sit in the back seat and do not speak.  Watson fiddles with her purse strap, and then her phone, before letting out a great exhalation of air and tugging the casefile from her purse and flipping it open.  She is reviewing the initial case, all jumble of inappropriately applied facts and extraneous information.

The case itself is fairly mundane, as far as murders go.  A man died, alone in his apartment.  What was more interesting than the man’s line of work – he was a diplomatic aide to the Greek embassy in the city – was the manner of his death.  He had been bitten no less than seven golden lanceheads which had been let loose in his apartment, the flesh melted clear away from the bites.  Jamie could understand why the case caught Sherlock’s attention, it had caught her’s as well.  Even the London papers were carrying it, touting this story of a man who’d been attacked by a rare viper indigenous only to the Ilha da Queimada Grande off the coast of Brazil.  Jamie had recognized the work, but had somewhat dismissed the case when she’d seen that the man was living not three floors up from an exotic snake dealer.  It could have simply been an accident.

What followed, however, was a whispering that the Viper was in New York on a job, a girl passing a note on, a favor for a favor.  Jamie had swallowed her pride to state her interest to her former captor through the Interpol contacts that he was so quick to bring up any time she was in prison.  They had nothing on her and knew that they could not give chance until she’d given them something legitimately criminal to base a line of inquiry upon.  Jamie had decided, however, to do just the opposite.  Offering her services to Sherlock, especially at this time of year, just stank of benevolence and good will.

Jamie wanted the Viper. She wanted his contacts and to see her name smeared in his blood at the tips of his fingertips.  She wanted to use this moment for a coup even before she came to New York.  Now, trapped in the melancholy of nostalgia that comes with this time of year, Jamie wants him even more.  Perhaps it is this want that drives her to the memories, and not the other way around.  She has no use for such emotions, and had killed them all long ago.

Perhaps that was her failing.

“You’re quiet.” Watson says.

She says nothing as the car speeds over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Watson gets a text and reads it quickly. “They’re bringing in Nikolas.”

“Good, I’d like to talk to him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s nothing untoward, Joan. I want to know if he’s allergic to bees.”

“Bees?”

“It might explain the centipedes.”

It is Watson’s turn to shake her head and dismiss a theory out of hand.  “It wouldn’t matter, those are two different reactions.”

“The viper is a genius with poisons, Joan, I’m sure he could figure it out.”

They lapse into silence once more.

It isn’t surprising to Jamie that one of the missing snakes is found dead a few hours later, while they’re sitting at the precinct waiting for something to happen.  Sherlock and Joan are going over their notes with Detective Bell, and they’ve left her alone to stare at Captain Gregson in his office.  He’d been the one who was the most hesitant to have her included in the investigation, not liking the implications of her presence or any ulterior motives that they might have.  But the circumstances of the case, as Agent Matoo explained them to him, were such that he could not reasonably say no. 

She had manufactured the circumstances by which she was invited into the investigation, yes, but it had been for the best. The Viper was not the sort of foe that would back down easily, not one to be easily dissuaded for his continued pursuit of the target.  Jamie knew her involvement would make him cautious, provided he even knew she was involved at all.  There was no such guarantee.

Sherlock insisted that they be taken along to examine the extremely aggressive snake that had been killed by a bodega owner trying to put together a basement supply run when he’d stumbled upon it, coiled up next to the exhaust pipes of the basement cooler.  He’d grabbed a shovel and successfully removed the creature’s head.  

 “Good riddance,” Detective Bell mutters.  He’s bent down inspecting the headless snake.  It is easily a meter long and shows signs of being emaciated.  The Viper is clever, but the snake should never have been here; this bodega owner smells like the surge of humanity, but certainly is not his target. “Murdering snakes, what’s next, diabolical pigeons?”

“The idea is not without merit, Detective Bell.”  Jamie cannot help herself, not when Watson and Holmes but stand stock-still and stare at her as though she’s started singing some great aria and not merely making something that could possibly resemble a joke.  She merely raises an eyebrow at them and pulls a pen from her pocket to inspect the snake.  It looks warm and comfortable, if headless and clearly starving.

Jamie frowns, her lips pitching downwards and a thoughtful expression drifting across her face. Sherlock’s noticed what she has, and is pacing the floor.  He bounces, testing the wooden floor. There are boxes everywhere full of crisps and abysmal American chocolate.  There is a moment of silent communication between him and Watson, before he bends and pushes away a larger, heavier box labeled ‘Frito-Lay Dip.’  There is an indentation on the floor in the shape of a trap door.

“Oh well played,” Sherlock mutters.  Watson seems impressed as well, but more cautious.  Sherlock has always been the brash one of the pair.  He’s eyeing Jaime now, watching her with narrowed, almost accusatory eyes.  Jamie gives him a little wink and turns to Watson. 

That is the difference now, she does not feel as compelled to twist the knife.  Twisting the knife feels almost petty after Irene’s grand reappearance and Sebastian’s death.  Instead she’s set her eyes on Watson.  Watson who comes far more easily to Jamie than she’ll ever care to admit.  She’d gone about Sherlock all wrong, she admits this freely now.  She’d seen Watson as a mere hanger-on, captivated by Sherlock’s brilliance and swept away by it.  Her shortsightedness had been her undoing.

“A basement within a basement?”  Watson sounds almost bewildered, but there’s a crinkle of amusement at her eyes that Jamie knows is genuine.  It’s pleasant.  She likes it, likes how Watson’s looking to her with the same wry sort of smile that Jamie’s flashing at her.  This is a flirtation; and Sherlock is probably well aware of it.

Jamie wants him to know what they did.  What she wants to do again.

“Everyone has to have a secret lair somewhere, Joan,” Jamie replies.  She’ll have Watson again.

“I don’t suppose you do.”

Jamie gives a mirthless laugh.  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Watson shakes her head and smiles, ducking down the steps after the uniformed officers that have ventured down first, guns drawn and prepared to fire upon anything that they encountered. Jamie follows, one hand plunged into her pocket, fingers curling around her gun. 

Below there is a chemists’ lab set up along one long table against the far wall. Everything is dimly lit by the glow of heat lamps and it feels almost cave-like.  Sherlock has to stoop, as do many of the uniformed officers, to even look around. 

The entire place is filthy, dirty beyond compare.  There are biohazards that dot the place and she’s forced to step away from the work bench before she can get a good look, the smell is so powerful.  Everything looks to freshly placed, the man is just gone, probably while his snake was being killed.  She’ll have to see if they agree, but her theory is beyond sound.  Whether or not the lackwits who work with Sherlock and Watson figure that out is up to some debate, but Jamie sees the whole situation as somewhat promising. 

The walls rattle as the subway passes by and the snakes that are housed in long tanks under heat lamps shift, uneasy.  The lights are still on, and the acrid smell of smoke and chemicals fills the air.  Jamie wrinkles her nose and sees the moment when Sherlock makes the realization of what they’re dealing with.  They’ve just missed him.  And he’s gone after the target.

“He’s just gone,” Sherlock announces.

Jamie, hands plunged into her pockets, shakes her head in disgust.  “Damn.”


	4. Chapter 4

Her theory is confirmed later, when they're face to face with the remaining target.  Jamie hangs back as they're leaving the interview room and inquires as to the nature of his allergy to bee stings.  He seems to be taken aback by her line of inquiry but soon settles as she fires off questions, short shot.  It is a wonder that they’ve let her interview him at all.  She’s technically not licensed as a consultant by the city, her presence here is a favor to a friend and nothing more.  They know she wants something, they all do, even this gnat of a man who has no idea how large a piece of the puzzle he truly is.

He sit sand listens to her questions, his head tilted off to one side and a positively baffled at her line of questioning. _Does he need an epi-pen if he is stung?  Does he have it on him?_  He looks at her, mouth agape like a beached fish gasping for the breath that the air itself cannot give. The language barrier falls away and he slowly nods yes to her questions and starts to explain in rapid Greek that his allergy is severe and something that he and his brother shared. 

"Is that why he died so quickly?"

"Perhaps," Jamie answers, and ducks out of the room.  She has little use for this man now, his brother, the higher ranking of the pair in terms of Greek diplomatic corps, would have actually been useful to Jamie.  She had photographs of a liaison between him and an under-aged (for America anyway) male escort, and was waiting for the appropriate time to use them.  A plot like Macedonia was probably beyond her now, with half her contacts burned and the rest of her secrets twisting like sparks – ash in the wind.

She stands in the middle of a police station and does not feel at all out of place.  They cannot touch her now, and the satisfaction of knowing that she is willingly standing in the middle of the wolves’ den without so much as them sniffing what she had planned is enough to set her face into a full and broad smile. Jamie cannot have that, though not just yet.  She needs to find the Viper first, before she can be truly smug about the coup she’s just pulled off.  She’ll take on the Viper’s clientele, take his jobs for a while, work as him.  She knows his methods well, the glimpse into his work space will prove her task easy enough.

She wonders if she can perhaps train the snakes to do her bidding.  A bell perhaps?

No, that would not work, snakes don’t have ears, and it would have to be touching the source of the vibrating stimulus to know where to go and what to attack.  Far too complicated. 

Poison, however, poison was women’s work.  Jamie knew poisons, not as well as the Viper, but few did.  With his book she could find his sources, track their movements, and take out the suppliers, replace them with her people.  She would rebuild from there.  She’d decided as soon as she saw the reports of the first murder in the London papers.

Watson is leaning against the wall outside of Captain Gregson’s office, chewing at her lip.  They’re slightly chapped, Watson isn’t getting enough water, a hazard of the time of year.  She’s taken out the obnoxious reindeer earrings in favor of simple studs.  She looks tired, but when she catches sight of Jamie, there’s a moment where her face brightens considerably before she can get her emotions back under control.

_That_ , Jamie thinks darkly, _is most curious._

Their flirtation has always been just that: a flirtation.  There was one lapse in judgment, a fall from grace of sorts for Watson.  Jamie remembers the night fondly, when she’d set to the task of destroying Watson’s innocence with her tongue tracing reverent patterns in places that were only ever meant to sin.  She wonders if Watson remembers it as fondly.  Perhaps that is why she’s still receptive.  Perhaps that is why she isn’t pulling away when Jamie leans forward and into her personal space to look over the itemized report within the folder clutched in Watson’s hands.

“From the sub-basement.” Watson offers an explanation even when one is unnecessary.  She really should know better.

“Ah.”  It’s not needed, a verbal tick of the English language, one they should both be well and truly better than succumbing to.

There are details of note in this text.  Things that Jamie thinks stand out.  The abundance of dead snakes and insects in the lab, as well as the tools present for milking venom from such beasts seems to speak to her theory as to the Viper’s intentions.  Both brothers were set to be killed, after all, and Jamie could not let that happen.

She only wished that it was the one that still lived that the Viper had killed first.  She has no use for saving this one.

A debt, perhaps, a favor to be cashed in upon at some sort of a later date.

“He’s killed his stock,” Jamie comments, tapping on the inventory.  “Three dead and four severely emaciated and probably not long for this world, plus all the headless centipedes.  It’s a pity, those snakes are gorgeous killers.”

“You would find that beautiful.”

“There is beauty in all things Joan; it’s simply a matter of perspective.  A snake is an artful killer, all muscle and carefully controlled movements, waiting in long periods of seeming dormancy before moving to strike in one precisely controlled attack.  It’s beautiful.”  Jamie inclines her head to one side, a wry smile dancing at her lips.  “I like beautiful things.”

“So you’ve said.  I’m not a thing.”

“No one ever said you were darling.”

Watson lets out an exasperated sigh that has Jamie smirking fondly at her.  This is the game that they play, the game that has Jamie wanting to twist and push the knife further into Watson without her ever knowing it.  She wants to spell out the undoing of the entirety of the universe with her tongue on the sweat on Watson’s neck, fingers plunged deep within her, rutting like some beast against Watson’s thigh.  She wants and wants and wants and when Watson looks away and Sherlock comes out, Jamie knows exactly what the scowl he gives her is for.

He’s trained at observing minutiae; after all, Jamie’s far better at exploiting them.

 

It is by executive decision of Captain Gregson that they are set out on stakeout again.  Cramped in a cold car and not feeling much like talking.  Gone is the flirtation of the night before.  Now they just both want to see this over.

Jamie shifts forward, picking at the back of gummy bears that Watson has produced from her purse and selecting a clear one – _pineapple – excellent_.  She contemplates it for a moment before sitting back, eyes on the house across the street. They’re watching the younger brother’s house.  He’s locked in Captain Gregson’s office, but a uniformed officer who looked a great deal like the man has borrowed his coat and has come and gone from the house with a grocery cart, giving it the appearance of recently vacated.  It follows the Viper’s pattern of setting out his snake traps while the homeowner was away.

"Sherlock told me you spent a Christmas together."  There is no question in Watson's voice.  She's merely making a statement, but it is the statement that Jamie finds interesting.  So much of this time in this endeavor has been spent dodging the issue of their shared connection to Sherlock Holmes.  It isn't that they do not wish to discuss it, but rather that it cannot be mentioned.  It shatters the uneasy peace that they've forged.

"We did."  She takes another gummy bear and chews thoughtfully.  There's a thought here, Watson is looking for something. The want to lie is almost overpowering, but she bites it back.  There is no reason why she cannot tell Watson this truth, but Watson has already seen too much of the truth in her every move and action.  She looks away, breath fogging before her.  "It was lovely."

They had taken pictures, of the tree, of each other, of the morning that they'd spent.  Jamie had never seen them developed while Irene was still alive, the roll of film sat dormant in the freezer of her safe house for many months before she'd seen it fit to twist the knife. She'd sent them, one by one, on three Christmases since.  Turned them into postcards full of bad memories just to prove something that she could not admit to herself.  That those memories did not matter, that she was immune to the feeling of loss that she did not feel when she looked at the snapshot of Sherlock's lips pressing against her cheek.

"He showed me the postcards."

"Ah."  _Bugger._

Watson turns her eyes narrowed and dark. "What the hell is wrong with you?"  She sucks in a breath and sits back, eyes trained on the street ahead of them.  Her entire body seems tense, ready to leap out and rain destruction down upon Jamie.

"I had to keep up the image of Moriarty somehow, Joan.  Give Sherlock a good shadow to chase."

“You’re a monster.”

“I’m playing a role, darling, same as everyone else.”

They fall into silence then, only this is not companionable like so many of their other silences.  Watson is angry and Jamie knows that she’s said too much.  She wants to be honest with Watson, far more honest than she’s ever wanted to be with anyone before.  It leaves her feeling confused and terrified that she’s treaded far too close to dangerous waters.  It’s what she wants though, she wants this to be their relationship, and she knows that Watson values that honesty.

Equality in any relationship is a fallacy but the honesty is what keeps them all sane in the end.

So Jamie throws caution to the wind and admits to something that she’d never thought that she’d need to say out loud.  Watson’s called her on it, used it to undo everything Jamie’s worked her entire life for, and yet somehow, it feels like it must be said.  “I did love him, you know.  That was probably the first happy Christmas I’d ever had.”

Watson regards her with a curious expression on her face.  Jamie knows then that she’s got her.  The expectation of honesty is not one that Watson has of Jamie, and Jamie uses it as judiciously as she can.  “I wasn’t implying…”

They do not have a chance to speak further.  The radio crackles to life and Watson is throwing caution to the wind and getting out of the car.  The Viper is coming, the Viper is coming.  Detective Bell and Sherlock have seen him.  Jamie’s expression turns grim and reaches for the radio.  “Fall back, Sherlock. Let’s see what he does.”

Sherlock’s reply is lost as Jamie follows Watson into the snow-filled night air.  She follows half a step behind her up the house’s front steps and past the door that the Viper has left carefully open.  It’s odd, really, to not have to do the breaking in.  Jamie likes it, in a way.  She can pull out her gun and have Watson let loose a quiet sigh of what Jamie can only hope is relief, and nod once with approval. 

They move silently, as one, until they encounter a hallway and a set of stairs.  Jamie indicates the footprints on the steps and places one finger over her mouth.  She gestures for Watson to check the first floor, knowing that there will be no danger there. The Viper works alone and Jamie wants him alone, even if only for a moment.

She climbs the stairs silently, breath steady and even.

She hears him before she sees him, and raises the gun to level at his knee, shooting twice and watching as his body crumples down to the floor with an anguished groan.  She steps forward, and he scrambles backwards across the white carpet, leaving a trail of smeared blood in his wake, his leg hanging limp and useless to one side. 

“Diego.”  Her smile is self-satisfied as the false epi-pen falls from his outstretched fingers and her assessment of his next move has proved accurate. He was planning on triggering an allergic reaction and killing with the supposed saving grace of the epi-pen.  It was a clever ruse, but one that Jamie had seen through after the centipedes had gone missing from the zoo as well.  “Fancy meeting you here.”

He is ashen-faced from blood loss, and his naturally tan skin has taken on a pallor that Jamie finds particularly disgusting.  His scraggly facial hair stands out under his shaggy hair in the half-light from the hallway and Jamie wishes that she could stop before the temptation to hurt him more overwhelms her.  It will be no fun if he simply rolls over and shows his belly to her.

“Y-you’re supposed to be in jail!” His voice is laced with pain and Jamie wants to shoot him again to see what will happen.  He looks like one of his snakes, creeping and crawling around on the floor, injured and unable to do anything but waste away from his injuries.  “You turned down this contract!”

“Yes, Diego, I did.  Did you ever wonder why you were on the receiving end of my organization’s castoffs?  This is not a glory grab, I assure you.”  She levels the gun at his face, imagines the bullet splitting his forehead in two.  His blood would spray so pettily against these pristine white walls. “The police are looking for you and I intend to let them have you, provided you can give me something in return.”

The problem with snakes is that they have a strong sense of self-preservation.  They know when they’re beat, when they are too injured to get away from what is sure to be certain doom.  Diego is no different, the Viper is just like all the others, possessing weakness and inferior intellect.  Jamie longs for a challenge, a mind that she can readily match against without feeling as though she wants to spill all her secrets out like some sort of snitch.

She longs to get out from underneath the pull of Joan Watson.  It is Joan Watson, after all, that is making Jamie even consider staying her hand.

He grasps at his mangled knee and Jamie knows she’s won.  She moves, presses booted foot into the wound, crushes his fingers into the mess of blood and bone.  She wants him to suffer for this.  She wants him to feel the pain of what he’s done by making her come back here.  “I want your book.”

“My book…my book isn’t here!”

“Then I want its location and don’t you dare lie to me Diego, there is not a corner of this earth where I cannot find you and grind the answers out of you until there is nothing left of you but a fine dust.”

He rattles off a name, a church in Barcelona where a priest is holding it for him.  He’s crying now, tears streaming down his face and Jamie’s about to push down harder with her foot just to ask again, just to ensure he’s telling the truth when she hears the stairs creak and a quiet gasp of air behind her.  Watson has found her, Watson is going to—

Jamie’s thoughts are derailed by Watson’s question, by her bending down to pick up the epi-pen and stare at it, a scowl deepening across her face.  “You’ve shot him.”

“So I have.”

“Was it really necessary?”

“Of course, he tried to run away.”

Jamie glances behind her to where Watson is bending to pick up the Viper’s fallen weapon.  She stares down at the gun for a moment.  “You didn’t kill him.”

“Happy Christmas, Joan.”  Jamie gestures with her gun to the Viper.  “I do think he might require medical attention if he’s going to be of any use to either you or the Greeks.”

Watson rolls her eyes and steps away, pulling out her phone and speaking to presumably Detective Bell on the other line. 

 

It is late before they’re allowed to leave the precinct. Jamie has given her statement to five different investigators by the time they’re all said and done, and she’s got a missed call from Agent Matoo on the line that he knows about.  The sky is crisp and clear and Jamie’s breath fogs before her face as she checks the notifications on her phone, one glove pulled off so as to enable the use of her touch screen.  She’s heard the quiet footsteps behind her, and she know she’s acquired a shadow.  The sort that she wants, however, not the irritating sort that bring up bad memories and twist her gut.

She’ll call Agent Matoo in the morning. 

Watson is standing behind her, hands plunged into her jacket pockets looking entirely too casual for Jamie’s liking.  Jamie is used to her being on edge and uncomfortable with every passing moment of their interaction.  This seems too friendly, too open, to inviting.  Watson sucking her bottom lip into her mouth and meeting Jamie’s gaze shyly is certainly not helping the situation.

“Have they let you go then?”

“I was always free to go.”

“And yet you stayed.”  Jamie has her suspicions, and Watson’s playing a dangerous game.  A game that is sure to be noticed by the prying eyes of Sherlock, if not Detective Bell and Captain Gregson.  Jamie’s eyebrows furrow ever-so-slightly and she turns away from Watson to hide the crack that’s so clearly erupting from her mask of indifference.  “Why?”

_What does Watson think she’s playing at?_

“I thought maybe you’d like to make a happier memory.”

A slow and easy smile curls at Jamie’s lips and she turns back around to face Watson fully.  This time the smile feels as genuine as Jamie can muster without feeling as though her face is splitting in two.  Small, closed-off.  That’s what she does when she’s not pretending to be someone else.  “I never realized you were so bold, Joan.”

They’re in each other’s space, close and breathing warm shared air.  Jamie is taken with her, with how her face looks in the glow outside the precinct.  She’s taken with how Watson looks when she’s horrified, when she’s terrified, or when she’s aroused.  She wants to see all the emotions of life expressed across Watson’s face, twisting and contorting it until she finally understands. 

From her purse, Watson produces a small wrapped package.  “This is for you,” she says.  There’s no shyness in her manner, this is just a simple gesture at this time of year.  “I’d like a shower, as I’m sure you would as well.  I thought maybe we could meet up and have that drink afterwards.”

“What is it?” Jamie asks, fingering the package.  It has been three years since anyone has given her a Christmas present.

Watson’s smile is tight-lipped, like a grimace or a smothered laugh.  Jamie cannot tell.  She gives a small shrug and tilts her head to one side.  “Wait and see.  There’s only two more days until Christmas.”

 

They walk down Sixth Avenue, close enough to the bustle of shopping and Times Square that Jamie’s skin crawled at the exposure.  They were close to Macy’s soon enough, and she let Watson pull her towards the windows.  The streets, even at the late hour, are clogged with holiday shoppers.  Jamie lets Watson pause and examine each one, only half-listening to Joan’s cheerful babble about how she used to come to look at these when she was a child.  “—My father would bring me,” she was saying, and Jamie pauses, stopped before a display of Santa’s elves on Neptune, lit in blue and green and oddly mesmerizing.  “Even after Oren decided he was too old for Christmas, I always went with him.”

“You’ve never spoken about your father.”  She feels stupid as soon as she says it.  It the clever sort of comment that she wants to use to impress upon Watson how interesting it is to her that this detail is being shared at all.  Jamie knows all about Watson’s father, she’d done her homework before she’d returned to Sherlock’s life.  The wildcard of Watson merited some research.  Jamie had been a fool to dismiss her as another daughter of a mentally ill man dying on the cross because she could not save her own father. 

She would never make that mistake again.

Watson was just like her, Just like Sherlock.  Different and yet somehow the same; a great mind that saw through all of Jamie’s masks to the core person underneath.

“I figured you already knew.”

Jamie looks down at her boot-clad feet for a moment before looking up.  She meets Watson’s gaze evenly.  “I did, but I assumed there was a reason he was never mentioned, same as my father.”

“Ah.”

“Quite.”  Jamie looks back to the window once more.  As a child, this display in particular would have been fascinating to her.  She loves space, the stares.  Always has and probably always will.  “Do you think she cares for the stars?”

Watson is quiet for a long time, staring straight ahead at the next Window and the gaggle of tourists clustered around it.  She sucks in a breath of air and reaches out.  There’s a press of warm fingers against Jamie’s hand, hanging limply at her side.    They tangle together and Jamie knows then, she just knows, that this is the humanity that Watson wants to see in her.  The humanity that Watson is attracted to. 

If only she knew better how to show it.  It would make this game so much easier to play.

“I think that she’s eight years old, Jamie.  And that she cares for the woman who saved her life a great deal.”  Watson’s face is close then, and Jamie kisses Watson like she’s some sort of college dalliance, quick and chaste on the lips. 

“I know a place,” Jamie says against Watson’s lips.

“Then let’s go.”

 

It is snowing outside when Jamie awakens with the itch to create.  She traces cheap hotel pens against paper found in her purse until she has a perfect sketch of Watson, legs caught up in a sheet and dozing as snow fell gently outside.  She leaves the drawing next to a card and a perfectly wrapped box of water color paint procured for her during the night.  Watson will see the name and know what to do. 

No child of Jamie’s will ever be holy, but perhaps knowing Watson will steer her down the path of angels.

And when she opens the package Watson had given her and finds a small stuffed panda bear, she shakes her head and sets it aside.  Watson had seen her childhood disappointment hidden beneath the veil of adult loathing and had sought to remedy that.  It is a gift for a child, perhaps.  A child that Jamie never truly had a chance to be.

x

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slight delay. Been hella busy with the holidays.

**Author's Note:**

> Moriarty is using Celsius here, it doesn't get that cold in NYC in December.
> 
> The cafe that that they go to is modeled after [Cafe Grumpy](http://cafegrumpy.com/) in Chelsea.
> 
> [Golden Lanceheads](http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/snake-island-ilha-de-queimada-grande) ([Bothrops insularis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothrops_insularis)) come from Snake Island or Ilha da Queimada Grande off the coast of Brazil.


End file.
